Post by chefandre on Aug 15, 2021 22:56:37 GMT -5
Winning isn’t everything. Adversity builds character. Having your expectations shattered, re-evaluating your life, building yourself back up from the broken pieces of who you thought you were and what you thought you were capable of separates men from mediocrity.
However.
Winning felt pretty damn good. Andre wasn’t about to wish he hadn’t been on a winning team, not for all the character and personal development in the world. Who would turn down the cheering of the crowds, the thrill of facing down a challenge and emerging victorious? Winning isn’t everything, but it was certainly an enjoyable way to end the night.
Of course, the night wasn’t over, and Andre had slipped away from the crowds, backstage. Toddrick hadn’t found him yet, and he had a rare moment of peace and quiet, all alone.
It was amusing, Andre thought, for a man who considered himself something of a loner, how often he found himself in the company of others. He didn’t mind it. Enjoyed it even. But he still thought of himself as a man all alone.
From his duffel bag, he pulled out a portable induction cooktop, and found an outlet next to a sagging plastic table to set it on. The cast iron skillet, his visual signature when he stepped into the ring, wiped down and placed with care on the cooktop. From the catering table, he’d liberated several handfuls of tomatoes left abandoned in the vegetable tray, and a couple of fat, wilted Hot Pockets left from what had once been an awful pyramid full of them.
Andre unfurled a portable cutting board from his bag, and began to cut the contents of each Hot Pocket free from its greasy carbohydrate casing, tipping them into the now-hot skillet. Diced tomatoes, in the pan. A fistful of herbs, found fresh growing outside some hipster little cafe on the way to the venue earlier in the day, chopped and into the pan they went.
A one pan skillet pasta, anyone with even a passing familiarity of the way kitchen remixes go would recognize the setup, but where did Andre get pasta from? Andre was not a prepper, but he did like to be prepared. Of course he had a box of pasta in his duffel bag, just in case. You never knew when you might encounter a pasta emergency.
And finally, from a cold, insulated lunchbox, Andre pulled out his water pistol, shooting the last of the savory soupe au pistou that he hadn’t found mouths for into the pan, enough liquid for the pasta to cook. He gave everything a good stir with a wooden spoon from his bag, and then tore off a sheet of foil in lieu of a lid.
Winning was satisfying, but so was this.
While the pasta cooked in its sauce, reconstituted from the abomination of life as a Hot Pocket into a tasty new destiny, Andre cut some of the catering table rolls into slices, spreading them with individually wrapped pats of “butter” (or substance dubiously proximate to the concept of butter), sprinkling garlic powder all over, and wrapping them in more foil. No, he didn’t have an oven, but he had found a clothes iron backstage, and hopefully the foil would keep the garlic smells from transferring from the bread to the iron. Whose iron was this anyway?
Eh, didn’t matter. It would work just the same. Andre figured that cooking was his specialty. He hadn’t figured out yet that his specialty was, regardless of what happened, making life work out just the same.
It wasn’t like Andre had dropped straight out of the womb and into a chef’s coat. He knew that.
Well, okay. Technically speaking…that was exactly what had happened. But it was just a coincidence! He didn’t pull a spatula from a stone and inherit the title of King of the Cooktops. He was not inherently, genetically destined for life as a chef.
But the chef coat thing—complete coincidence!—was true. You shouldn’t put any great supernatural significance to it. Life is full of meaningless coincidences like this. Totally meaningless.
Oh fine, it may mean nothing, but I’ll tell you about it anyway. It was a late summer night in Paris, some thirty years ago, and the bun cooking in the oven of maman Poêlon was several days overdue. On that fateful night, more than anything, she wanted a crêpe.
No, not just any crêpe.
No, she did not want her husband to make a crêpe.
She wanted a specific crêpe, from the crêperie tucked off the main road around the corner from Notre-Dame, one slathered with Nutella, drizzled with Grand Mariner, stuffed with bananas and sprinkled with shredded coconut.
No, she did not want it brought back to her. The crêperie was far from their little apartment in the 19th arrondisement. It would be cold by the time her husband brought it back to her.
No, she felt fine to go with him. She wanted what she wanted. The baby was already late, he could wait a little longer.
Thus how the Poêlons found themselves on a nearly empty Métro car headed into the heart of Paris, late one summer night, when the train broke down. And unthinking little Andre apparently decided the time was perfect to make his debut.
In a more modern world full of cell phones and ceaseless connectivity, an emergency ambulance dispatcher would have been able to walk the Poêlons step by step through the instructions of childbirth, brightly printed cards like a recipe to follow—if breech, proceed to step 15, if crowning, proceed to step 7, and so forth, the birth of a baby coming together as easily (for the bystanders anyway) as a box-mix cake.
But this was not a time of cell phones. This was a time of new parents, and panicking, and none of the books prepared us for this.
At the other end of the car, a large man with arms crossed over his double-breasted grey chef’s coat startled awake from his nap when they had jolted to a stop some minutes prior. He looked around the car, at the pregnant woman, the pale-faced man, and recognized the strangled cries she was making.
«That baby’s coming now,» the man said, walking over to the couple, unbuttoning his coat, «faster than you can fry a fish.»
The woman shook her head furiously through the pain, as if she could stop the process by sheer force of will. Andre could wait. He had to wait. She couldn’t have a baby stuck underneath the streets of Paris.
The chef spread his coat out on the floor and patted it with a meaty hand. «My sous chef was the same way madame. Stubborn as a mule. They told her to rest, take time off work, but no. Had her daughter right there in the kitchen. “Let me finish the entree,” she said, “then I’ll go to the hospital.” Come here madame, please. You haven’t got much time.»
They got her onto the chef’s coat as he continued. «You know how long it takes to cook sole meunière, yes? She got the brown butter made, put the fish in the pan, and then?» he snapped his fingers. «Daughter born, right there in the kitchen, before the fish was done. Minutes.»
Andre wasn’t as fast as a sole meunière, but he was there screaming into the stale air of the night with fresh lungs before rescue crews arrived.
But that didn’t make Andre a chef. Years immersed in the culinary world, losing himself in the transformation of ingredients into the elevated deliciousness of a dish—that is what made him a chef. At the gleaming stainless steel industrial stoves of a high end kitchen, or looming over a lone induction plate after a wrestling match—he was still a chef.
He was so absorbed in cooking that he didn’t even notice that someone else had joined him. He was in a perfectly meditative place, breathe in the scents, breathe out as he pressed the iron on the foil.
It was Dionysus. I’d like to tell you exactly what was said as they ended up sharing the miracle of a Hot Pocket reborn, right out of the skillet, plastic forks and cheap paper napkins dredged up from somewhere so that they didn’t have to eat with their hands. But the night had been a long one, victory notwithstanding, and Andre couldn’t even remember the specifics of what kind of hello was said.
He couldn’t even remember whose idea it was, thinking about it later. But it was the sort of idea so right, that afterwards you’re left wondering why there’d ever been a time before the idea. It should have existed from the very beginning.
They worked well together in the ring, as fate had seen fit to team them up twice so far. They even vibed well together as a theme—the man of wine, and the chef serving the meal to pair with it.
Somewhere that evening, among the banter now lost to Andre’s memory, team Al Fresco was officially born.
“Andre,” Toddrick slurred, sprawled in his usual Waffle House booth as the chef tap-tap-tapped his spatula among the potatoes and eggs dotting the grill. “Dude, where have you been posting up your promos?”
“My what?”
“Your trash talk. Well, what passes for trash talk with you, you know. ‘I am the dinner bell that will ring in your end. Time Jumpers, your time is up,’ you know dude, that hackneyed shit that people love.”
Andre turned to Toddrick and looked confused. “I am supposed to be…doing something with my trash talk?”
Toddrick groaned. “Dude, duuuuude. Have I taught you nothing?”
Andre gave him a pointed look, but Toddrick’s face was buried in his phone, the expression completely missed.
“So you mean to tell me you haven’t done a single promo yourself, not for any of these matches?”
“Toddrick!” Andre hit the spatula against the grill. “When did I ever give you the impression that I have any idea what I am doing?”
“It’s fine,” Toddrick drawled, flicking on his screen to try to get his camera to come up. “Match isn’t till tomorrow anyway. C’mon, gimme your best trash talk. It’s y’all versus Larry Tact and the Time Jumpers.”
“I am going to tactlessly jump down your throat in no time and pull your liver out, you donkey.”
“Don’t trash talk ME,” Toddrick stopped the recording. “Trash talk THEM.”
“I thought all I needed to do was simply fight!” Andre grumbled, turning back to the grill. “I did at least learn that.”
“I’ll give you five minutes to think of some nice, painful puns my friend. Then we’re filming,” said Toddrick, setting a timer on his phone. “Pretty sure half the point of promos is like, inflicting punitive damage on your opponents beforehand anyway. Pun absolutely intended.”
Andre thought hard, and sighed in defeat that he really had to do this. Toddrick began recording on his phone as Andre turned to face him, arms folded.
“We may be Al Fresco, but I promise this will be no picnic for the likes of you. Jump wherever you want, there is no point in time where you Time Jumpers and the tactless Larry will be getting the best of us and Erika. You think you can try?” He slaps the spatula against his coat. “BE OUR GUEST!”
“Dammit Andre!” his manager hollered, snatching the spatula out of his hand, before Toddrick could hit the stop button. “Now we gotta wash that spatula again.”
However.
Winning felt pretty damn good. Andre wasn’t about to wish he hadn’t been on a winning team, not for all the character and personal development in the world. Who would turn down the cheering of the crowds, the thrill of facing down a challenge and emerging victorious? Winning isn’t everything, but it was certainly an enjoyable way to end the night.
Of course, the night wasn’t over, and Andre had slipped away from the crowds, backstage. Toddrick hadn’t found him yet, and he had a rare moment of peace and quiet, all alone.
It was amusing, Andre thought, for a man who considered himself something of a loner, how often he found himself in the company of others. He didn’t mind it. Enjoyed it even. But he still thought of himself as a man all alone.
From his duffel bag, he pulled out a portable induction cooktop, and found an outlet next to a sagging plastic table to set it on. The cast iron skillet, his visual signature when he stepped into the ring, wiped down and placed with care on the cooktop. From the catering table, he’d liberated several handfuls of tomatoes left abandoned in the vegetable tray, and a couple of fat, wilted Hot Pockets left from what had once been an awful pyramid full of them.
Andre unfurled a portable cutting board from his bag, and began to cut the contents of each Hot Pocket free from its greasy carbohydrate casing, tipping them into the now-hot skillet. Diced tomatoes, in the pan. A fistful of herbs, found fresh growing outside some hipster little cafe on the way to the venue earlier in the day, chopped and into the pan they went.
A one pan skillet pasta, anyone with even a passing familiarity of the way kitchen remixes go would recognize the setup, but where did Andre get pasta from? Andre was not a prepper, but he did like to be prepared. Of course he had a box of pasta in his duffel bag, just in case. You never knew when you might encounter a pasta emergency.
And finally, from a cold, insulated lunchbox, Andre pulled out his water pistol, shooting the last of the savory soupe au pistou that he hadn’t found mouths for into the pan, enough liquid for the pasta to cook. He gave everything a good stir with a wooden spoon from his bag, and then tore off a sheet of foil in lieu of a lid.
Winning was satisfying, but so was this.
While the pasta cooked in its sauce, reconstituted from the abomination of life as a Hot Pocket into a tasty new destiny, Andre cut some of the catering table rolls into slices, spreading them with individually wrapped pats of “butter” (or substance dubiously proximate to the concept of butter), sprinkling garlic powder all over, and wrapping them in more foil. No, he didn’t have an oven, but he had found a clothes iron backstage, and hopefully the foil would keep the garlic smells from transferring from the bread to the iron. Whose iron was this anyway?
Eh, didn’t matter. It would work just the same. Andre figured that cooking was his specialty. He hadn’t figured out yet that his specialty was, regardless of what happened, making life work out just the same.
It wasn’t like Andre had dropped straight out of the womb and into a chef’s coat. He knew that.
Well, okay. Technically speaking…that was exactly what had happened. But it was just a coincidence! He didn’t pull a spatula from a stone and inherit the title of King of the Cooktops. He was not inherently, genetically destined for life as a chef.
But the chef coat thing—complete coincidence!—was true. You shouldn’t put any great supernatural significance to it. Life is full of meaningless coincidences like this. Totally meaningless.
Oh fine, it may mean nothing, but I’ll tell you about it anyway. It was a late summer night in Paris, some thirty years ago, and the bun cooking in the oven of maman Poêlon was several days overdue. On that fateful night, more than anything, she wanted a crêpe.
No, not just any crêpe.
No, she did not want her husband to make a crêpe.
She wanted a specific crêpe, from the crêperie tucked off the main road around the corner from Notre-Dame, one slathered with Nutella, drizzled with Grand Mariner, stuffed with bananas and sprinkled with shredded coconut.
No, she did not want it brought back to her. The crêperie was far from their little apartment in the 19th arrondisement. It would be cold by the time her husband brought it back to her.
No, she felt fine to go with him. She wanted what she wanted. The baby was already late, he could wait a little longer.
Thus how the Poêlons found themselves on a nearly empty Métro car headed into the heart of Paris, late one summer night, when the train broke down. And unthinking little Andre apparently decided the time was perfect to make his debut.
In a more modern world full of cell phones and ceaseless connectivity, an emergency ambulance dispatcher would have been able to walk the Poêlons step by step through the instructions of childbirth, brightly printed cards like a recipe to follow—if breech, proceed to step 15, if crowning, proceed to step 7, and so forth, the birth of a baby coming together as easily (for the bystanders anyway) as a box-mix cake.
But this was not a time of cell phones. This was a time of new parents, and panicking, and none of the books prepared us for this.
At the other end of the car, a large man with arms crossed over his double-breasted grey chef’s coat startled awake from his nap when they had jolted to a stop some minutes prior. He looked around the car, at the pregnant woman, the pale-faced man, and recognized the strangled cries she was making.
«That baby’s coming now,» the man said, walking over to the couple, unbuttoning his coat, «faster than you can fry a fish.»
The woman shook her head furiously through the pain, as if she could stop the process by sheer force of will. Andre could wait. He had to wait. She couldn’t have a baby stuck underneath the streets of Paris.
The chef spread his coat out on the floor and patted it with a meaty hand. «My sous chef was the same way madame. Stubborn as a mule. They told her to rest, take time off work, but no. Had her daughter right there in the kitchen. “Let me finish the entree,” she said, “then I’ll go to the hospital.” Come here madame, please. You haven’t got much time.»
They got her onto the chef’s coat as he continued. «You know how long it takes to cook sole meunière, yes? She got the brown butter made, put the fish in the pan, and then?» he snapped his fingers. «Daughter born, right there in the kitchen, before the fish was done. Minutes.»
Andre wasn’t as fast as a sole meunière, but he was there screaming into the stale air of the night with fresh lungs before rescue crews arrived.
But that didn’t make Andre a chef. Years immersed in the culinary world, losing himself in the transformation of ingredients into the elevated deliciousness of a dish—that is what made him a chef. At the gleaming stainless steel industrial stoves of a high end kitchen, or looming over a lone induction plate after a wrestling match—he was still a chef.
He was so absorbed in cooking that he didn’t even notice that someone else had joined him. He was in a perfectly meditative place, breathe in the scents, breathe out as he pressed the iron on the foil.
It was Dionysus. I’d like to tell you exactly what was said as they ended up sharing the miracle of a Hot Pocket reborn, right out of the skillet, plastic forks and cheap paper napkins dredged up from somewhere so that they didn’t have to eat with their hands. But the night had been a long one, victory notwithstanding, and Andre couldn’t even remember the specifics of what kind of hello was said.
He couldn’t even remember whose idea it was, thinking about it later. But it was the sort of idea so right, that afterwards you’re left wondering why there’d ever been a time before the idea. It should have existed from the very beginning.
They worked well together in the ring, as fate had seen fit to team them up twice so far. They even vibed well together as a theme—the man of wine, and the chef serving the meal to pair with it.
Somewhere that evening, among the banter now lost to Andre’s memory, team Al Fresco was officially born.
“Andre,” Toddrick slurred, sprawled in his usual Waffle House booth as the chef tap-tap-tapped his spatula among the potatoes and eggs dotting the grill. “Dude, where have you been posting up your promos?”
“My what?”
“Your trash talk. Well, what passes for trash talk with you, you know. ‘I am the dinner bell that will ring in your end. Time Jumpers, your time is up,’ you know dude, that hackneyed shit that people love.”
Andre turned to Toddrick and looked confused. “I am supposed to be…doing something with my trash talk?”
Toddrick groaned. “Dude, duuuuude. Have I taught you nothing?”
Andre gave him a pointed look, but Toddrick’s face was buried in his phone, the expression completely missed.
“So you mean to tell me you haven’t done a single promo yourself, not for any of these matches?”
“Toddrick!” Andre hit the spatula against the grill. “When did I ever give you the impression that I have any idea what I am doing?”
“It’s fine,” Toddrick drawled, flicking on his screen to try to get his camera to come up. “Match isn’t till tomorrow anyway. C’mon, gimme your best trash talk. It’s y’all versus Larry Tact and the Time Jumpers.”
“I am going to tactlessly jump down your throat in no time and pull your liver out, you donkey.”
“Don’t trash talk ME,” Toddrick stopped the recording. “Trash talk THEM.”
“I thought all I needed to do was simply fight!” Andre grumbled, turning back to the grill. “I did at least learn that.”
“I’ll give you five minutes to think of some nice, painful puns my friend. Then we’re filming,” said Toddrick, setting a timer on his phone. “Pretty sure half the point of promos is like, inflicting punitive damage on your opponents beforehand anyway. Pun absolutely intended.”
Andre thought hard, and sighed in defeat that he really had to do this. Toddrick began recording on his phone as Andre turned to face him, arms folded.
“We may be Al Fresco, but I promise this will be no picnic for the likes of you. Jump wherever you want, there is no point in time where you Time Jumpers and the tactless Larry will be getting the best of us and Erika. You think you can try?” He slaps the spatula against his coat. “BE OUR GUEST!”
“Dammit Andre!” his manager hollered, snatching the spatula out of his hand, before Toddrick could hit the stop button. “Now we gotta wash that spatula again.”
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